LOVE: Of ‘preppers,' bunkers and keeping safe

The economy, elections, taxes, pensions, health care, government waste, the Kardashians â" on and on go the things people worry about these days.

And then there are the bunker types in Menifee.

Thatâs not a typo and itâs not even the 1950s and the Red Scare all over again. A couple of Menifee folks really want to build bunkers in their seemingly tranquil community.

The topic has been debated in various recent Planning Commission meetings. At first, Menifee had a moratorium while the city researched how to handle these things; bunkers are not exactly something public agencies deal with routinely.

The issue also has nothing to do with the Menifee City Councilâs recent feuding â" people really arenât trying to escape the dangerous political fallout â" nor is it apparently connected to the timely name of the city staffer whoâs handling the matter, Carmen Cave.

What this has plenty to do with are TV shows such as National Geographicâs âDoomsday Preppersâ and Discoveryâs âDoomsday Bunkers.â

The Zombie that I am (one bunker guyâs nickname for the folks who wonât be prepared for the next catastrophic event), I get online to check out a sneak peek of the Discovery show.

It starts with some guy living on the Florida coast worried about flooding there â" which seems reasonable enough â" until you hear heâs got a tsunami-proof bunker in the mountains 300 miles inland. We soon realize extreme is the norm with these folks.

The salesman for the bunker company advises us, âIf youâre not ready, youâre already dead.â

My troubles are over I guess.

Our Florida friend says he spent thousands of hours on the Internet checking out this issue before building. And I thought I had too much free time.

From there we go to a guy who wants a $50,000 tactical bunker to handle firefights he expects anytime outside his expensive-looking home. I can relate; I worry constantly about firefights in my modest Murrieta neighborhood.

Then thereâs the woman who makes âprepper (these are the enlightened people actually prepared for the various catastrophes that await us 24/7) cookies and muffins.â Alas, she wonât share the recipe with nonpreppers. Well, duh! Bunker people like their secrets.

Or the sweet grandmother in New York who has a cache of weapons and some weird looking suit guaranteed to protect her from any and all contaminants and condiments.

Underlying everything in the show is the preppersâ constant mantra of âlife off the grid.â Actually, I find most locals like the grid, air conditioning being a good thing to have in summers around here.

Although nobody from Menifee is featured on the show, it dawns on me that our local preppers could be onto something. People in Temecula could build bunkers to hide from all the rush-hour freeway congestion there. In Murrieta, they could dig them to take shelter from those dangerous medical marijuana dispensaries city officials always fret about. In Wildomar, they could build bunkers to ward off any and all taxes.

And everybody could use one to shield us from the political ads bombarding us ahead of Tuesdayâs election.

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